If you're a photographer who uses Canon equipment and has been unable to use the Canon EOS utility after installing OS X Lion, some good news: Canon has issued an update to the tool that allows it to run properly in Apple's latest operating system.

The Canon EOS Utility is an application that allows you to interface your Mac with your digital EOS camera, allowing you to not only transfer images from it and manage them but also remotely operate the camera from your computer using Canon's interface cable.

When OS X Lion was released a number of Canon users found the utility would not work properly, and while you could launch the program using the Terminal to directly open the program's executable file, this was not a practical solution for most people to use.

For months since Lion's release, Canon users who have adopted Apple's new OS have had to find alternatives to the EOS utility, but in late January Canon released an update to the utility that should allow it to work properly in OS X Lion. The update supports OS X 10.6.8 or later, and supports the following Canon camera models:

• EOS REBEL T1i, T2i, T3, T3i, XS, and XSi
• EOS Kiss F, X2, X3, X4, X5, and X50
• EOS 7D, 40D, 50D, 60D, 450D, 500D, 550D, 600D, 100D, and 1100D

The update can be downloaded from the ... [Read more]

Apple released OS X 10.7.3 Lion today, the third such minor update to the operating system since it was launched last July.

The update, which went out to Lion users earlier this afternoon, includes an update to Safari, bringing the built-in browser up to version 5.1.3. System-wide, the update promises to fix bugs and add new languages, including Greek, Hebrew, Thai and Catalan, among others. It also fixes bugs with authenticating with directory services and what Apple says were "compatibility issues" with Windows file sharing.

The release follows some seven betas of the software given out to developers, the last two of which were delivered with no known issues.

Below is the full change log of what end users are getting with this one:

• • Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support
• • Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X
• • Resolve issues authenticating with directory services
• • Address compatibility issues with Windows file sharing
• • Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup
• • Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics
• • Resolve... [Read more]

Popular weather guidance site Weather Trends 360 has just brought its future-telling powers to the Android platform.

Previously available only on iOS, the wt360 app can now help Android users plan events up to a year in advance. For instance, are you wondering if it could rain on your destination wedding next May? Just fire up the wt360 app, enter a location, and take a look. Obviously, you can't expect the app to be terribly accurate at predicting the exact temperature eight months from now. But you can expect it to give you a good general idea of the weather on any given date. And if you just need to know typical weather trends for specific months, then the app is even more useful.

The wt360 app is available for 99 cents now in the Android Market.

The new Google Docs update in the Android Market added offline viewing for Android phones and tablets.

Offline access is essential when you're not able to connect to the Internet, like on a plane or in a network dead zone. Here's how to use the new Google Docs offline feature for Android:

First, make sure you have the latest Google Docs app installed on your Android device.

Mark files for offline use

Android phone On your Android phone, long-press on a document and select Make available offline.

Android tablet On your Android tablet, you have three ways to mark documents for offline viewing:

1. Long-press on a document and select Make available offline.
2. Open the document's preview pane and check the Available offline box.
3. Open the document's preview pane and touch the menu button in the top right-hand corner, then select Make available offline.

View offline files

Android phone To view your offline files on an Android phone, simply select Offline, on the main Google Docs screen.

Android tablet To view your offline files on an Android tablet, select Offline, in the left-... [Read more]

Humble Bundles are renowned for offering name-your-own price indie game collections. But mostly they've been computer games. That changes today--sort of.

The Humble Bundle for Android comes with three games: Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Edge, and Osmos. If you were to purchase them separately, they'd cost you $10.47.

Buy the bundle, however, and you can pay whatever you want. A buck. A penny. Twenty bucks. A portion of the proceeds (whatever portion you want, in fact) can go to charity, so it's not crazy to open your wallet a bit more than you otherwise might.

But wait, there's more. If you pay more than the average purchase price (currently $5.94), you get a bonus game: World of Goo, which normally sells for $4.99 all by itself.

All four games have 4.5- or 5-star user ratings on Android Market. Of them, I've played only World of Goo, which is singularly awesome, but obvious... [Read more]

Ten's Complement's Zevo Silver Edition brings ZFS to Mac OS X.

Apple may have given up on the idea of building Sun Microsystems' ZFS file system into Mac OS X, but one of its engineers has picked up where Apple left off.

Don Brady, a former Apple engineer and ZFS, now is leading a small team at start-up Ten's Complement that's been commercializing the software since its 2010 founding. They have released their first product, the $19.95 Zevo Silver Edition, the first version of a product formerly called Z410.

ZFS was a spotlight feature of the Solaris operating system, which Sun released as open-source software and which Oracle took over after acquiring the server maker. ZFS features include the ability to manage vast amounts of data (it originally stood for Zettabyte File System), high reliability, easy administration when it's time to allocate more or less storage to particular computers or tasks, and "pools" to accommodate multiple storage devices without troubling users with details.

Zevo Silver Edition doesn't include everything in ZFS, but the sales pitch should sound familiar: "The technology used in Zevo was designed from the ground up to address today's storage concerns. The new design throws away obsolete assumptions. Fundamental features like data integrity and scalability are built in... [Read more]

After 10 years, Windows XP is still the most popular OS.

Windows XP refuses to give up its top spot without a fight.

The decade-old OS has slowly been losing more users to Windows 7, but January marked a small resurgence in its grip on the market, according to stats out today from NetApplications.

For the month, Windows XP grabbed 47.19 percent of all OS users, inching up from 46.5 percent in December. At the same time, Windows 7 saw its market share dip to 36.4 percent from almost 37 percent the previous month.

Obviously, a fraction of a percentage point is nothing for XP to crow about, especially since its overall share has dropped from almost 58 percent a year ago. But it does point to the continued popularity of an OS that Microsoft would like to see kick the bucket.

The folks in Redmond have been pushing both consumers and companies to jump ship from XP to Windows 7.

As part of that push, Microsoft has been constantly reminding people that support for XP runs out in April 2014, at which time security patches and other updates will no longer be available. Though that gives individuals plenty of time to upgrade, enterprises face a longer path to migration, putting more pressure on them to switch to Windows 7 before too long.

Micros... [Read more]

Net Applications' statistics show the increasing use of tablets and phones for Web browsing.

Internet Explorer staved off rival browsers on personal computers in the first month of 2012, but a new battlefield is emerging where Microsoft has virtually no presence today: mobile.

Among personal computers, IE reclaimed a chunk the global browser usage, rising from 51.9 percent in December to 53 percent in January, according to new statistics from Net Applications.

However, while browsing with desktops and laptops dominates, mobile devices are catching up. Smartphones and tablets accounted for an all-time high of 8.8 percent of browsing in January, up from 7.7 percent the month earlier.

And on mobile, Microsoft's presence is close to nothing right now. The mobile version of IE9, which ships with Windows Phone, accounted for 0.2 percent of mobile browser usage in January, Net Applications said. Adding in earlier mobile versions of IE brings that up to 0.3 percent, matching Amazon's new Silk browser used in its Android-based Kindle Fire tablets.

Net Applications' statistics for browser usage on mobile devices.

For comparison, Apple's iOS leads here, with 54.9 ... [Read more]

Our cookbooks are spending more time on the shelf. My laptop has fewer tomato stains. In place of these trusted recipe sources, our iPads and iPhones are becoming fixtures in our kitchen.

My wife and I are using iOS apps to discover new recipes and restaurants, shop more effectively at the grocery store, and keep track of noteworthy meals. Also, I found In-N-Out Burger's app, which I hope to use frequently on my next trip to the West Coast.

What you won't find here is anything in the way of a shopping list app. The cookbook apps below offer a shopping list feature, but I haven't found a dedicated shopping list app I like better than pen and paper. If you use such an app, please describe its merits in the comments below. And if you have a favorite food- or kitchen-related app that I missed in this roundup, let me know that, too.

Shop Know what to buy organic with the Dirty Dozen app This handy and free iOS app lists the 12 fruits and vegetables with the most pesticide residues.

How to find local produce with Locavore This free iOS or Android app shows you where to find locally grown produce and when it's in season.

... [Read more]

PCAnywhere customers' computers are apparently safe again as long as they apply the latest security patch to the software.

Following news of the theft of the product's source code, Symantec last week advised customers to disable the software to guard against cyberattacks.

But a round of free upgrades released last week were aimed at cleaning up the vulnerabilities.

On January 23, Symantec released a patch to secure PCAnywhere 12.5. And then January 27, the company rolled out another patch directed toward PCAnywhere versions 12.0 and 12.1.

Posting the latest information about the security updates and the source code theft, Symantec is advising users to apply all the relevant patches as they come out and follow best practices (PDF) when it comes to security. Customers who don't have the latest version with the new p... [Read more]

Microsoft is already testing the waters with the next version of its popular Office suite.

Office 15 officially made its debut as a technical preview yesterday, available to a small number of early testers who will provide feedback that can influence the final release.

And though the technical preview program is already full, a beta of the new Office suite will surface for everyone to play with later in the summer.

A Microsoft blog posted yesterday by PJ Hough, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Office Division, spilled very few beans about the new suite codenamed Office 15. And those select few who were chosen to check out the technical preview have had to sign non-disclosure agreements, so their lips will be tight as well.

Calling Office 15 "the most ambitious undertaking yet for the Office Division," Hough simply said that the new suite will mark the first time that "Microsoft will simultaneously update its cloud services, servers, and mobile and PC clients for Office, Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and Visio."

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